Don’t say ‘those who can’t do, teach’ to Blake Leftwich. The former Surry Community College “simulation and game development” instructor left that gig this year to devote himself full time to Eggroll Games, the company he started with business partner Michael Oder in 2011.

Eggroll Games makes educational apps for smartphones and tablets, both Apple and Android. There are currently seven games in the catalog, which have been downloaded collectively more than 1 million times.

Both Leftwich and Oder work from home and make frequent use of freelance illustrators, sound designers and others. The company’s first game, Jungle Jam, took about four months to create, but having climbed up the learning curve and found ways to reuse things like menus and certain art elements, Eggroll’s newest games went from idea to submission to the App Store in about three weeks.

Eggroll favors the pricing model that allows users to try a game for free and pay for in-app upgrades. He said the typical “conversion rate” for such games is that 2 percent to 4 percent of users will end up paying, and he said Eggroll is in that range with costs varying from $0.99 to $3.99.

That model is doing well enough to allow Leftwich to pay his bills and keep hiring freelancers, but the goal for Eggroll is to start hiring some of the talent it has used that way or as interns as regular employees. He hopes to be putting out one new game each month by the end of this year, and he thinks Eggroll could start adding employees in 2014.

“The myth, and it’s one we don’t subscribe to, is that you create a big hit app and make a million dollars,” Leftwich said. “For us, if we can keep a pipeline of good products coming at a certain level of quality, we’re going to be able to grow that way.”